Avi C. Engel: Nocturne (Soundtrack For An Invisible Movie)
(Shaking Field/ Somewherecold Data)
Cassette | CD | DL
Out Now
Andy Brown drifts right into a blissful trance with the newest album from Toronto-based artist, Avi C. Engel. He shares his ideas for Louder Than Conflict.
Singer-songwriter appears like an more and more insufficient description with regards to Toronto-based artist, Avi C. Engel (they/ them). Whereas they actually compose and sing lovely songs, it’s their capacity to create a deeply immersive and evocative atmospheare that basically transports you as a listener. This has been significantly true with their most up-to-date releases, together with final 12 months’s chic Too Many Souls. Nocturne (Soundtrack For An Invisible Movie) submerges us – as soon as once more – in Engel’s dreamy, nocturnal world.
The sound of howling winds fills my headphones on opening instrumental, Close to Snake Island. The gudok aches like a funeral procession. I shut my eyes and film myself getting into some darkish, windswept forest on the stroke of midnight. Appropriately sufficient, contemplating latest occasions, it jogs my memory of these atmospheric items Dean Hurley put collectively for the final collection of Twin Peaks. “The place does a moth go when it rains?” Engel asks on the following monitor. The picture of tiny wings in a downpour actually sticks in my thoughts because the monitor unfolds.
Engel effortlessly blends acoustic guitar, talharpa, melodica, percussion, subject recordings and gudok to create a bit hidden world so that you can step inside. A spot of melancholic magnificence that gives some much-needed shelter from the storm. Nostalgia, a Saccharine Poison is a beautiful 7-minute instrumental that feels – conversely – like medication. My respiratory steadies with the gradual rise and fall of the music, rigidity dissipates and stress begins to ebb away. What extra may you ask for?
The celestial-folk of Bones Beguiling leads us by way of some sparse, starlit panorama as Engel sings a few “moon-drowned subject” and a few “untellable fact.” Thriller drips from each be aware and I’m misplaced in another person’s dream. It’s not each album that has this sort of impact. With minimal percussion and a hypnotic guitar motif, E Minor Fermented casts its spell. The monitor may go on for half an hour and I wouldn’t even realise. There’s magic on this moon music.
Into The Golden Void appears like a soundtrack to some transcendental awakening. “All is forgiven/ All is destroyed” comes the mediative mantra as we float into blissful oblivion. Engel’s beautiful voice acts as a guiding gentle. Actually, you really want to hearken to this album on headphones. Evening Stroll In The Loon Sanctuary is a ghostly, experimental instrumental. Footsteps echo as we head into the inky blackness of the evening. The monitor hums, clicks and flutters in my ears because the moon drifts behind a cloud. Now it’s darkish.
Ariel finds us floating on some infinite celestial sea, drained and misplaced in time. “Chilly infinity glow/ Heal each phrase/ Meaningless and complete” Engel sings as we bob up and down on the pitch-black waves. Phrases like this may occasionally sound a bit bleak but the music – and album as an entire – is immensely comforting. We lastly drift ashore with the attractive Cocoon, an instrumental constructed round a repeated acoustic guitar motif. Different instrumentation seeps in as we lastly lay our weary bones right down to relaxation.
Engel started recording the album throughout a interval of sleeplessness and despair and completed it as they got here out the opposite aspect. It’s their hope that the album would possibly present some type of consolation to equally unsettled souls. It has actually soothed mine. In case you really feel such as you want a break from all of the insanity of 2025 then Nocturne (Soundtrack For An Invisible Movie) is correct right here, able to take you away.
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You will discover Avi C. Engel on Bandcamp, Instagram, Bluesky, Fb and Patreon.
All phrases by Andy Brown. You’ll be able to go to his writer profile and skim extra of his critiques for Louder Than Conflict right here.
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